【英文读物】On the Margin

《【英文读物】On the Margin》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《【英文读物】On the Margin（70页珍藏版）》请在装配图网上搜索。

1、【英文读物】On the MarginI: CENTENARIESFrom Bocca di Magra to Bocca dArno, mile after mile, the sandy beaches smoothly, unbrokenlyextend. Inland from the beach, behind a sheltering belt of pines, lies a strip of coastal plainflatas a slice of Holland and dyked with slow streams. Corn grows here and the vi

2、ne, with plantationsof slim poplars interspersed, and fat water-meadows. Here and there the streams brim over intoshallow lakes, whose shores are fringed with sodden fields of rice. And behind this strip of plain,four or five miles from the sea, the mountains rise, suddenly and steeply: the Apuan Al

3、ps. Theirhighest crests are of bare limestone, streaked here and there with the white marble which bringsprosperity to the little towns that stand at their feet: Massa and Carrara, Serravezza, Pietrasanta.Half the worlds tombstones are scooped out of these noble crags. Their lower slopes are greywit

4、h olive trees, green lOwith woods of chestnut. Over their summits repose the enormoussculptured masses of the clouds.From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,Over a torrent sea,Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,The mountains its columns be.The landscape fairly quotes Shelley at you. This sea with

5、 its luminous calms and sudden tempests,these dim blue islands hull down on the horizon, these mountains and their marvellous clouds,these rivers and woodlands are the very substance of his poetry. Live on this coast for a little andyou will find yourself constantly thinking of that lovely, that str

6、angely childish poetry, thatbeautiful and child-like man. Perhaps his spirit haunts the coast. It was in this sea that he sailedhis flimsy boat, steering with one hand and holding in the other his little volume of ?schylus. Youpicture him so on the days of calm. And on the days of sudden violent sto

7、rm you think of him, too.The lightnings cut across the sky, the thunders are like terrible explosions overhead, the squallcomes down with a fury. What news of the flimsy boat? None, save only that a few days after thestorm a young body is washed ashore, battered, unrecognizable; lithe little ?schylu

8、s in the coatpocket is all that tells us that this was Shelley.I have been spending the summer on this haunted coast. That must be my excuse for mentioningin so self-absorbed a world as is ours the name of a poet who has been dead these hundred years.But be reassured. I have no intention of writing

9、an article about the ineffectual angel beating inthe void his something-or-other wings in vain. I do not mean to add my croak to the mellifluouschorus of centenary-celebrators. No; the ghost of Shelley, who walks in Versilia and the Lunigia,by the shores of the Gulf of Spezia and below Pisa where Ar

10、no disembogues, this ghost withwhom I have shaken hands and talked, incites me, not to add a supererogatory and impertinentencomium, but rather to protest against the outpourings of the other encomiasts, of thehoney-voiced centenary-chanters.The cooing of these persons, ordinarily a specific against

11、 insomnia, is in this case an irritant; itrouses, it exacerbates. For annoying and disgusting it certainly is, this spectacle of a rebelliousyouth praised to fulsomeness, a hundred years after his death, by people who would hate himand be horrified by him, if he were alive, as much as the Scotch rev

12、iewers hated and werehorses, our contemporaries write of trains, automobiles, and the various species of wops andbohunks who control the horsepower. That is all. Much too much stress has been laid on thenewness of the new poetry; its newness is simply a return from the jewelled exquisiteness of thee

13、ighteen-nineties to the facts and feelings of ordinary life. There is nothing intrinsically novel or38surprising in the introduction into poetry of machinery and industrialism, of labour unrest andmodern psychology: these things belong to us, they affect us daily as enjoying and sufferingbeings; the

14、y are a part of our lives, just as the kings, the warriors, the horses and chariots, thepicturesque mythology were part of Homers life. The subject-matter of the new poetry remainsthe same as that of the old. The old boundaries have not been extended. There would be realnovelty in the new poetry if

15、it had, for example, taken to itself any of the new ideas andastonishing facts with which the new science has endowed the modern world. There would bereal novelty in it if it had worked out a satisfactory artistic method for dealing with abstractions.It has not. Which simply means that that rare phe

16、nomenon, the poet in whose mind ideas are apassion and a personal moving force, does not happen to have appeared.And how rarely in all the long past he has appeared! There was Lucretius, the greatest of all thephilosophic and scientific poets. In him the passionate apprehension of ideas, and the des

17、ire andability to give them expression, combined to produce that strange and beautiful epic of thoughtwhich is without parallel in the whole history of 39literature. There was Dante, in whose soul themedi?val Christian philosophy was a force that shaped and directed every feeling, thought andaction.

18、 There was Goethe, who focussed into beautiful expression an enormous diffusion ofknowledge and ideas. And there the list of the great poets of thought comes to an end. In theirtask of extending the boundaries of poetry into the remote and abstract world of ideas, theyhave had a few lesser assistant

19、sDonne, for example, a poet only just less than the greatest;Fulke Greville, that strange, dark-spirited Elizabethan; John Davidson, who made a kind of poetryout of Darwinism; and, most interesting poetical interpreter of nineteenth-century science, JulesLaforgue.Which of our contemporaries can clai

20、m to have extended the bounds of poetry to any materialextent? It is not enough to have written about locomotives and telephones, /zwops and bohunks,”and all the rest of it. That is not extending the range of poetry; it is merely asserting its right todeal with the immediate facts of contemporary li

21、fe, as Homer and as Chaucer did. The critics whowould have us believe that there is something essentially unpoetical about a bohunk (whatever aBohunk may be), and something essentially poetical about Sir Lancelot of the 40Lake, are, ofcourse, simply negligible; they may be dismissed as contemptuousl

22、y as we have dismissed thepseudo-classical critics who opposed the freedoms of the Romantic Revival. And the critics whothink it very new and splendid to bring bohunks into poetry are equally old-fashioned in theirideas.It will not be unprofitable to compare the literary situation in this early twen

23、tieth century of ourswith the literary situation of the early seventeenth century. In both epochs we see a reactionagainst a rich and somewhat formalized poetical tradition expressing itself in a determination toextend the range of subject-matter; to get back to real life, and to use more natural fo

24、rms ofexpression. The difference between the two epochs lies in the fact that the twentieth-centuryrevolution has been the product of a number of minor poets, none of them quite powerfulenough to achieve what he theoretically meant to do, while the seventeenth-century revolutionwas the work of a sin

25、gle poet of genius, John Donne. Donne substituted for the rich formalism ofnon-dramatic Elizabethan poetry a completely realized new style, the style of the so-calledmetaphysical poetry of the seventeenth century. He was a poet-philosopher-man-of-actionwhose passionate 41curiosity about facts enable

26、d him to make poetry out of the most unlikelyaspects of material life, and whose passionate apprehension of ideas enabled him to extend thebounds of poetry beyond the frontiers of common life and its emotions into the void ofintellectual abstraction. He put the whole life and the whole mind of his a

27、ge into poetry.We to-day are metaphysicals without our Donne. Theoretically we are free to make poetry ofeverything in the universe; in practice we are kept within the old limits, for the simple reasonthat no great man has appeared to show us how we can use our freedom. A certain amount ofthe life o

28、f the twentieth century is to be found in our poetry, but precious little of its mind. Wehave no poet to-day like that strange old Dean of St. Pauls three hundred years agono poetwho can skip from the heights of scholastic philosophy to the heights of carnal passion, from thecontemplation of divinit

29、y to the contemplation of a flea, from the rapt examination of self to anenumeration of the most remote external facts of science, and make all, by his strangelypassionate apprehension, into an intensely lyrical poetry.The few poets who do try to make of contemporary ideas the substance of their poe

30、try, 42do it ina manner which brings little conviction or satisfaction to the reader. There is Mr. Noyes, who iswriting four volumes of verse about the human side of sciencein his case, alas, all too human.Then there is Mr. Conrad Aiken. He perhaps is the most successful exponent in poetry ofcontemp

31、orary ideas. In his case, it is clear, the remotest discoveries of the chemist areapprehended with a certain passion; all his emotions are tinged by his ideas. The trouble with Mr.Aiken is that his emotions are apt to degenerate into a kind of intellectual sentimentality, whichexpresses itself only

32、too easily in his prodigiously fluent, highly coloured verse.One could lengthen the list of more or less interesting poets who have tried in recent times toextend the boundaries of their art. But one would not find among them a single poet of realimportance, not one great or outstanding personality.

33、 The twentieth century still awaits itsLucretius, awaits its own philosophical Dante, its new Goethe, its Donne, even its up-to-dateLaforgue. Will they appear? Or are we to go on producing a poetry in which there is no more thanthe dimmest reflection of that busy and incessant intellectual life whic

34、h is the characteristic anddistinguishing mark of this age?V: WATER MUSICThe house in which I live is haunted by the noise of dripping water. Always, day and night,summer and winter, something is dripping somewhere. For many months an unquiet cistern keptup within its iron bosom a long, hollow-toned

35、 soliloquy. Now it is mute; but a new and moreformidable drip has come into existence. From the very summit of the house a little spouttheoverflow, no doubt, of some unknown receptacle under the rooflets fall a succession of dropsthat is almost a continuous stream. Down it falls, this all but stream

36、, a sheer forty or fifty feet onto the stones of the basement steps, thence to dribble ignominiously away into some appointeddrain. The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; but my lesser waterfalls play a subtler, Ihad almost said a more modern music. Lying awake at nights, I listen with a

37、mixture of pleasureand irritation to its curious cadences.The musical range of a dripping tap is about half an octave. But within the bounds of this majorfourth, drops can play the most 44surprising and varied melodies. You will hear them climbinglaboriously up small degrees of sound, only to descen

38、d at a single leap to the bottom. More oftenthey wander unaccountably about in varying intervals, familiar or disconcertingly odd. And withthe varying pitch the time also varies, but within narrower limits. For the laws of hydrostatics, orwhatever other science claims authority over drops, do not al

39、low the dribblings much licenceeither to pause or to quicken the pace of their falling. It is an odd sort of music. One listens to itas one lies in bed, slipping gradually into sleep, with a curious, uneasy emotion.Drip drop, drip drap drep drop. So it goes on, this watery melody, for ever without a

40、n end.Inconclusive, inconsequent, formless, it is always on the point of deviating into sense and form.Every now and then you will hear a complete phrase of rounded melody. And thendrip drop,di-drep, di-drapthe old inconsequence sets in once more. But suppose there were somesignificance in it! It is

41、 that which troubles my drowsy mind as I listen at night. Perhaps for thosewho have ears to hear, this endless dribbling is as pregnant with thought and emotion, assignificant as a piece of Bach. Drip drop, di-drap, di-drep. So little would 45suffice to turn theincoherence into meaning. The music of

42、 the drops is the symbol and type of the whole universe;it is for ever; as it were, asymptotic to sense, infinitely close to significance, but never touching it.Never; unless the human mind comes and pulls it forcibly over the dividing space. If I couldunderstand this wandering music, if I could det

43、ect in it a sequence, if I could force it to someconclusionthe diapason closing full in God, in mind, I hardly care what, so long as it closes insomething definitethen, I feel, I should understand the whole incomprehensible machine, fromthe gaps between the stars to the policy of the Allies. And gro

44、wing drowsier and drowsier; I listento the ceaseless tune, the hollow soliloquy in the cistern, the sharp metallic rapping of the dropsthat fall from the roof upon the stones below; and surely I begin to discover a meaning, surely Idetect a trace of thought, surely the phrases follow one another wit

45、h art, leading on inevitably tosome prodigious conclusion. Almost I have it, almost, almost. Then, I suppose, I fall definitely tosleep. For the next thing I am aware of is that the sunlight is streaming in. It is morning, and thewater is still dripping as irritatingly and persistently as ever.Somet

46、imes the incoherence of the drop 46music is too much to be borne. The listener insists thatthe asymptote shall somehow touch the line of sense. He forces the drops to say something. Hedemands of them that they shall play, shall we say, God Save the King, or the Hymn to Joy fromthe Ninth Symphony, or

47、 Voi che Sapete. The drops obey reluctantly; they play what you desire,but with more than the ineptitude of the child at the piano. Still they play it somehow. But this isan extremely dangerous method of laying the haunting ghost whose voice is the drip of water.For once you have given the drops som

48、ething to sing or say, they will go on singing and saying itfor ever. Sleep becomes impossible, and at the two or three hundredth repetition of Madelon oreven of an air from Figaro the mind begins to totter towards insanity.Drops, ticking clocks, machinery, everything that throbs or clicks or hums o

49、r hammers, can bemade, with a little perseverance, to say something. In my childhood, I remember, I was told thattrains said, To Lancashire, to Lancashire, to fetch a pocket handkercher/,and da capo adinfinitum. They can also repeat, if desired, that useful piece of information: To stop the train,pu

50、ll down the chain. But it is very hard to persuade them to add the menacing corollary:47Penalty for improper use Five Pounds/* Still, with careful tutoring I have succeeded in teachinga train to repeat even that unrhythmical phrase.Dadaist literature always reminds me a little of my falling drops. C

51、onfronted by it, I feel the sameuncomfortable emotion as is begotten in me by the inconsequent music of water. Suppose, afterall, that this apparently accidental sequence of words should contain the secret of art and life andthe universe! It may; who knows? And here am I, left out in the cold of tot

52、al incomprehension;and I pore over this literature and regard it upside down in the hope of discovering that secret.But somehow I cannot induce the words to take on any meaning whatever. Drip drop, di-drap,di-drepTzara and Picabia let fall their words and I am baffled. But I can see that there are g

53、reatpossibilities in this type of literature. For the tired journalist it is ideal, since it is not he, but thereader who has to do all the work. All he need do is to lean back in his chair and allow the wordsto dribble out through the nozzle of his fountain pen. Drip, drop.VI: PLEASURESWe have hear

54、d a great deal, since 1914, about the things which are a menace to civilization.First it was Prussian militarism; then the Germans at large; then the prolongation of the war; thenthe shortening of the same; then, after a time, the Treaty of Versailles; then Frenchmilitarismwith, all the while, a run

55、ning accompaniment of such minor menaces as Prohibition,Lord Northcliffe, Mr. Bryan, Comstockery.Civilization, however, has resisted the combined attacks of these enemies wonderfully well. Forstill, in 1923, it stands not so very far from where it stood in that giant age before the flood ofnine year

56、s since. Where, in relation to Neanderthal on the one hand and Athens on the other,where precisely it stood then is a question which each may answer according to his taste. Theimportant fact is that these menaces to our civilization, such as it ismenaces including thelargest war and the stupidest pe

57、ace known to historyhave confined themselves in most placesand up till now to mere threats, barking more furiously than they bite.49No, the dangers which confront our civilization are not so much the external dangerswildmen, wars and the bankruptcy that wars bring after them. The most alarming dange

58、rs are thosewhich menace it from within, that threaten the mind rather than the body and estate ofcontemporary man.Of all the various poisons which modern civilization, by a process of auto-intoxication, brewsquietly up within its own bowels, few, it seems to me, are more deadly (while none appears

59、moreharmless) than that curious and appalling thing that is technically known as pleasure. Pleasure(I place the word between inverted commas to show that I mean, not real pleasure, but theorganized activities officially known by the same name) pleasurewhat nightmare visions theword evokes! Like ever

60、y man of sense and good feeling, I abominate work. But I would rather putin eight hours a day at a Government office than be condemned to lead a life of pleasure; Iwould even, I believe, prefer to write a million words of journalism a year.The horrors of modern pleasure arise from the fact that ever

61、y kind of organized distractiontends to become progressively more and more imbecile. There was a time SOwhen peopleindulged themselves with distractions requiring the expense of a certain intellectual effort. In theseventeenth century, for example, royal personages and their courtiers took a real de

62、light inlistening to erudite sermons (Dr. Donnes, for example) and academical disputes on points oftheology or metaphysics. Part of the entertainment offered to the Prince Palatine, on theoccasion of his marriage with James l?s daughter, was a syllogistic argumentation, on I forgetwhat philosophical

63、 theme, between the amiable Lord Keeper Williams and a troop of minorCambridge logicians. Imagine the feelings of a contemporary prince, if a loyal University were tooffer him a similar entertainment!Royal personages were not the only people who enjoyed intelligent pleasures. In Elizabethantimes eve

64、ry lady and gentleman of ordinary culture could be relied upon, at demand, to take hisor her part in a madrigal or a motet. Those who know the enormous complexity and subtlety ofsixteenth-century music will realize what this means. To indulge in their favourite pastime ourancestors had to exert thei

65、r minds to an uncommon degree. Even the uneducated vulgardelighted in pleasures requiring the exercise of a certain intelligence, individuality and personal51initiative. They listened, for example, to Othello, King Lear, and Hamletapparently withenjoyment and comprehension. They sang and made much music.